Christchurch

Haere mai to Christchurch!

We arrived in Christchurch on 13th of March in the early afternoon and unlike me most people only had one night in Christchurch, so I joined a lady from Uruguay walking and exploring Christchurch, seeing the monuments and parks and everything.

Christchurch is very spread out city after the earthquakes. The last big earthquakes were back in 2010 and Feb 2011, and they are still reconstructing the buildings that suffered major damage, eg the cathedral. After those two earthquakes the city council decided to spread out the city so less buildings will be in the centre of the next earthquake and less damage.

They started recording earthquakes in Christchurch in the mid 1800s and since then they had a earthquake of minimum 5 in magnitude every 5-10 years. That was the very special atmosphere I realized during my stay. Christchurch is located right above the tectonic plates and earthquake after earthquake hits, but they are still strong minded and reconstruct damaged buildings even though they know might not survive the next earthquake in just a few years. They don’t give up.

If someone of you plans to visit Christchurch in the future, I can really recommend visiting „Quake City“, the city museum. It might be just a very small museum, but it gives you an overview of past earthquakes in Christchurch and especially deals with the 2010/2011 earthquakes in an interactive way.

One might also know that Christchurch is not only the city of earthquakes, but also called ‘The garden city‘. Their botanic garden is right in the center of town yet very large. They have a huge variety of plants, a large rose garden and –very special- a New Zealand garden, exhibiting most of New Zealands plantlife, the silver fern, Kauri tree and many more.

It was a shame that I was sick and couldn’t do more or had another day, but I must have been guarded by an angel to not leave after two nights. I guess most of you have heard about the Christchurch incident on the 15th of march, and I want to give you a personal statement as from somebody that’s actually living here. I’ve left Christchurch for good to Kaikoura in the early morning at 7:25am, of course not knowing what would happen that day.

I still remember that moment when we came back from the boat from whale watching in Kaikoura, all sat down in the Whale Watch bus and the bus driver stood up. He was so stirred up, and he was so speachless it was hard for him to say anything. And when he told us there was a shooting in Christchurch, we were all just as shocked as him. Later, news called it a terror attack, and that was the first time ever that an event like this happened in New Zealand. 9 people died directly and another at least 50 more died of their injuries. The city of Christchurch was locked down, noone was allowed to enter or leave the city anymore for safety reasons. I found out that the mosque where the main shooting happened was a 15 minute walk away from the hostel where I’ve stayed and the people staying at the hostel were pleased to stay inside during the shooting. I've been told they could even hear the sirens from the other side of the botanic garden.

I am very shocked by it aswell, New Zealand always counted as a very safe country. And it happened so close to my hostel, aswell as I’d probably have been in the botanic garden inbetween the mosque and my hostel at that time as I did the day before. This is an incident that makes you think, and it will most likely take a while for the people to recover from the shock. None of my friends were in Christchurch that day, but my friend Kalah from Blenheim is visiting her friends down in Chc next week. Our bus driver to Blenheim&Nelson originally came from south of Dunedin but I’m not sure if she actually came from Christchurch that day. She was still very shocked, talked a hotpotch that was hard to understand and generally stirred up that even talking while driving was very hard for her.

I hope I can cheer you guys up with some pictures now, let’s give it a try!